Worth Reading: Practical Advice for Engineers
Sean Goedecke published an interesting compilation of practical advice for engineers. Not surprisingly, they include things like “focus on fundamentals” and “spend your working time doing things that are valuable to the company and your career” (OMG, does that really have to be said?).
Bonus point: a link to an article by Patrick McKenzie (of the Bits About Money fame) explaining why you SHOULD NOT call yourself a programmer (there goes the everyone should be a programmer gospel 😜).
"Spend your working time doing things that are valuable to your career" is probably the best advice. Especially if you work for a large corporate You take one bad assignment once, and 3 years down the road you find yourself stuck with upgrading routers or writing reports that nobody cares about while your colleagues are learning new skills.